1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for efficiently generating in a short time data to be written in a look-up table.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional electronic process scanner, for example, states of an output image such as color tones, contrast etc. set in a certain image processing condition can be confirmed by an operator on a color monitor in advance to actual scanning. When a look-up table is employed for a color operating part of such an electronic process scanner, the look-up table previously stores results obtained by performing color compensation operation on all input image data in accordance with prescribed color compensation calculating expressions. Color-compensated image data are immediately read out by the look-up table without performing a color compensation operation one by one on input image data obtained by input scanning, to be displayed on the color monitor. The look-up table may be formed for discrete input image data, so that data read from the look-up table are interpolated to obtain results of the color compensation operations with respect to all input image data. Since constants in the color compensation calculating expressions are varied with image processing conditions, the operation must be done over again to update look-up table data when the operator changes the image processing condition. However, since calculating expressions for color compensation are extremely complicated, a long time, e.g., about several seconds, has been required for such updating. Thus, the operator must accept a waiting time of several seconds until display on the color monitor is changed every time he sets an image processing condition in order to attain a desired output image by suitably changing the image processing condition while observing the states of an output image on the color monitor, and hence a considerably long time has been required to finally obtain the desired image by repeating such operations.